I'm doing sit-ups to get a demonic drill instructor who would like to get me tip-top shape so that I can combine his army corps. Quite a very long time back, this was one of several random events concocted as a way to RuneScape gold deal with the great number of bots that set up shop at Old School RuneScape, back when it was just plain RuneScape. They ceased being successful after a month or two. 14 years after they ceased being useful, they still persist.
"We kept them because the players quite liked them," states Mark Ogilvie, RuneScape design director. "They're part of the fabric of the world." It is a familiar story in a game that exists since gamers voted for its resurrection. Old School RuneScape was initially created to be a copy of the game as it had been in 2007--an specific replica designed to entice nostalgic adventurers. It is not a snapshot of the world as it was, however, as it is still a living game with upgrades, added quests and even a new continent appearing. It is in a visually odd position, growing alongside its successor, RuneScape 3.
"These players, even when they log in the game, it is muscle memory. While all that nostalgia is still there in the brand new RuneScape, it is hidden behind this veil of upgrades. This feels like a different game." When you leave the tutorial island, with its fundamental classes on the best way to move, fight and level up your abilities, you're dropped in Lumbridge, outside a castle, and you simply pick a direction. You may remember there are rats in the kitchen cellar (obviously there are), along with a quest from the Duke's chef that will send you around the surrounding area to find ingredients for a cake.
Normally, Jagex generates content targeted at the typical player level, so most of the low level quests were considered old in 2007. They're also the most completed quests in the game, being the very first things new players encounter, so it's even more important that they fit players' memories of them.
As I run around, searching down flour and eggs, Ogilvie points out some goblins lurking behind a weapon, threatening farmers. The little ne'er-do-wells are getting a little trouble getting past the barrier. They do not seem happy about it, but from cheap RS Gold where I'm standing, they can not get me. "This is really where quite a lot of players start their early ranging career, by sitting behind these little fences and shooting on the goblins with their bow and arrow," he clarifies. "The route-finding has always been quite strange in RuneScape, but once we try to alter it the players constantly beg us not to, so we have not."